Fighters vs ground. Can we stop this?

[Max_Damage]

New meta involves ground attack fighters. will easily destroy AT guns, AA guns and infantry and really fill all your ground attack needs.

The AT gun resistance fix in the last patch is the step in the right direction. Can we finally fix prevalent air vs ground effectiveness by disabling ground strafing for all but dedicated ground attack planes? Fighters partol at 5+ km, they can not reach ground targets AT ALL.

The worst part of it is how 12.7 mg fighters will rout tanks and decide tank duels

 

[captinjoehenry]

I agree with you but I feel the change should be to AAA so if you have a AAA net enemies cannot successfully attack your ground units with aircraft. And when I say strong I mean strong multiple 40mm or 37mm like more than 4 or something like 7 or so 20mm. That way if you invest the points you in AAA it is actually worth it instead of just being an annoyance to the enemy. That way the enemy has to use something other than just aircraft to to attack your troops.

In general though fighters are much to useful at strafing ground troops and panicking all manor of tanks and just deleting AT guns

 

[Dongs Galore]

Six .50s or four 20mm cannons absolutely should decimate infantry or guns caught out in the open. I don't see it as a serious problem, either, since they don't do that much damage to start with ingame.

 

[Karlburg]

Strafing runs by aircraft were historically not actually very accurate and mostly served to make people put their heads down more than anything else.

 

[Ahab78]

Not really a game changer in my experience...I don't think it's very helpful to make a balance thread about every tiny aspect of the game. Supression against tanks tends to be quite low in my experience. And nothing better than blwoing up supply trucks with fighters.

Also, fighters are easily spooked by any CAP on your own or single AA pieces.

 

[captinjoehenry]

Not really a game changer in my experience...I don't think it's very helpful to make a balance thread about every tiny aspect of the game. Supression against tanks tends to be quite low in my experience. And nothing better than blwoing up supply trucks with fighters.

Also, fighters are easily spooked by any CAP on your own or single AA pieces.

Fighters are the second toughest planes to scare off other than full blown bombers as they only retreat at 100% morale damage verse multirole at 50% which is most of the ground strike aircraft.

 

[TheDeadlyShoe]

its vastly irritating having fighters blow up your weapons teams and atgs, especially when you are playing a faction that doesnt even get phase a fighters.

Six .50s or four 20mm cannons absolutely should decimate infantry or guns caught out in the open. I don't see it as a serious problem, either, since they don't do that much damage to start with ingame.

Trying to argue in fighters favor with realism arguments is completely silly and you know it ;p

 

[Paper_hat]

I'm not sure about damage, but, in my opinion, fighters should easily be able to suppress infantry and weapon teams. I don't care how inaccurate strafing runs are, if infantry is moving in the open and a fighter comes in and strafes them with 8 50 cals they should hit the deck.

I see a lot of people complaining about aircraft, but I see a lot of those same people doing nothing to contest air superiority, its annoying. If you surrender control of the skies you should be punished for it.

AA got buffed a lot recently, but its only really use is to make your fighters more cost effective. You can't get away with skipping or using a minimal amount of fighters in this meta.

 

[Vyllis]

Six .50s or four 20mm cannons absolutely should decimate infantry or guns caught out in the open. I don't see it as a serious problem, either, since they don't do that much damage to start with ingame.

They are very good, i use fighters to:
kill AT guns/HMG/Artillery/mortars (very efficient),
to kill reconnaissance teams (very efficient),
kill infantry (efficient),
to stun or try to kill some isolated towed anti aircraft gun (moderate to efficient),
stun or destroy lightly armored vehicle (moderate to efficient),
helping my ground forces to stun tanks (moderate but worth the try),
kill enemy planes (very efficient).

Once my opponent start bringing shit load of anti-airs or his fighters more often i stop this. However, in this case, i got to this result without buying a single bomber and have surely some fighters to cover my own airspace.

Strafing runs by aircraft were historically not actually very accurate and mostly served to make people put their heads down more than anything else.

Amen.

 

[Klausewitz]

It comes down to the old problem of WW2 fighters with 21th century C&C, guidance and TAG.

 

[Vyllis]

It comes down to the old problem of WW2 fighters with 21th century C&C, guidance and TAG.

Exactly, same problem with some artillery in the game.

While tanks got a more realistic behaviour and less of a modern MBT likeness of movement & aiming since last patch.
Fighters planes and artillery are left with this problem (plus the fact that planes can be instantly summoned from any air corridor you own and repair & ream very very fast).

 

[Grosnours]

I even have a few examples of fighters destroying tanks, but basically Vyllis summed it up very well.
Fighters do way too many things too well and can advantageously replace bombers during the entirety of phase A as they might take longer to kill something but are also more resilient and can multi-task.
If we could replace fighter's strafing run ground damage by suppression that would be perfectly ok in my book. Still useful but not decisive.

 

[Stoffen]

Fighters are too good. I can see from my own stats that I spend 34% of my total income points (both factions) on planes.
I rarely use bombers and mostly use fighters. To me, it is evident that the problem is that ground based AA cannot perform deterrence, the opponents planes gets to drop their payload anyway, so I need to sink the points into fighters if my opponent uses planes - at all. And in cases where he doesnt, fighter trains are deadly to infantry and team weapons. As well as observers and open-topped vehicles.

The fix is to dramatically increase AA deterrence capacity. Imho.

 

[CyberianK]

I would not have a problem with nerfing fighters strafe a little.

It also would help to give Axis better availability of phase A and B AA. Or half the cost of Axis single Barrel AA and double its availability because yes they are that bad.
As for Air I still think that its not that bad anymore (especially if you are Allies) and I see many players waste their points on Air while I crush them everywhere on the ground. Tanks, Infantry and Artillery decide the games not Air units.

 

[Rojan]

I would not have a problem with nerfing fighters strafe a little.

It also would help to give Axis better availability of phase A and B AA. Or half the cost of Axis single Barrel AA and double its availability because yes they are that bad.
As for Air I still think that its not that bad anymore (especially if you are Allies) and I see many players waste their points on Air while I crush them everywhere on the ground. Tanks, Infantry and Artillery decide the games not Air units.

Allies seem to like to air spam when they don't have a front line. It gives me some of the easiest wins of my life.

 

[Ahab78]

Allies seem to like to air spam when they don't have a front line. It gives me some of the easiest wins of my life.

it is very natural to look for salvation from the sky when you heavily loose on the ground. Sadly it mostly doesn't work out that well in SD.

 

[CyberianK]

it is very natural to look for salvation from the sky when you heavily loose on the ground. Sadly it mostly doesn't work out that well in SD.

Yeah its better the other way around. If things are going well you have ground units on you whole front and are not in dire need of tank/AT/AA/Arty/recon/Inf.
THEN can you spend money on Air.
Also if your obliterating the enemy buying air makes you get those point to the other side faster.

When things are going bad usually never go air. Except maybe if you have guaranteed tank annihilator planes and know the enemy cant do anything against it and need to get rid of the enemy armored spearhead. But even then it might be better buying 3 AT or a good tank for that price.

 

[Ahab78]

When things are going bad usually never go air. Except maybe if you have guaranteed tank annihilator planes and know the enemy cant do anything against it and need to get rid of the enemy armored spearhead. But even then it might be better buying 3 AT or a good tank for that price.

Exactly. For example the Ju 87-G can be extremely devastating to tanks if left unchecked and might seem like a one-click problem solver. (just try it against a medium AI- trust me, tanks are going to blow up)

But if you're already on the loosing side of things a single plane will just get obliterated by CAPs and AAA. 200 points wasted, which might have been better invested in a well placed pak, recce and a MG 42.

So, on-topic, Fighters doing early phase A strafing runs are a much smarter investment because they are able to escape from most dangerous situations unharmed (if properly micro'ed) whilst performing well in two vital tasks. Ground support and CAP. Spending 125 pt early for a Spit is quite a reasonable investment, while spending 200 pt on a single Henschel in a desparate situation will most likely just end in a desaster (125 point Spit won't save your ass neither, then).

So, as I'm completely in favour in keeping huge supression values for fighters while strafing, damage might be adjusted or some cheapo planes that perform extraordinarily well should go up in price to reflect their true dual purpose nature.